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plant growth monitoring News

Syngenta has published the first update on progress towards meeting the six ambitious commitments in The Good Growth Plan, which was launched in 2013 to support the future sustainability of agriculture and rural communities. Syngenta established a global network of over 3,500 reference and benchmark farms in 2014. ...

Mobile phones are the unlikely weapons being used to fight cassava disease in Tanzania, in a collaboration between scientists and farmers. As part of the Digital Early Warning Network (DEWN) farmers from ten districts in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania will be trained to recognise the symptoms of Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD). They will then send monthly ...

Two University of Florida scientists will go to Kennedy Space Center March 16 for the launch of the SpaceX-3 Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, to send up and then monitor an experiment designed to help them understand biological functions in space. These experiments are important queries into the concepts of where life can exist in the universe and what it takes to survive in ...

World Conservation Union launches tool to save Mediterranean native plant diversity Gland, Switzerland, 9 November 2005 (IUCN) - Majorca, Ibiza, Sicily, Crete, Malta – for many, these islands conjure up images of dream holiday destinations. But the natural beauty that draws thousands of visitors to these islands every year is being fast eroded. Many of the close to 25,000 Mediterranean native ...

Increased plant biodiversity improves grassland soil quality by boosting its nitrogen levels, even in the absence of nitrogen-fixing plants, recent research has found. Previous research has shown that grasslands with higher biodiversity had higher levels of carbon and nitrogen. However, in the case of nitrogen it has been suggested that this was purely a result of increased numbers of ...

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and California State University, Chico have announced the appointment of Dr. Jeff Price as Senior Fellow for Climate Change and Biodiversity at the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, UK. Paul Zingg, President of CSU Chico, said today 'I am delighted with this new relationship with UNEP-WCMC because it will allow Jeff Price to ...

PhotosynQ, a project based at the University of Michigan in the United States, aims to help plant scientists around the world gather data through a cheap hand-held device called MultispeQ for scanning plant material. By connecting the device to a smartphone, researchers can use it to collect information about how efficiently a plant photosynthesises, for example, as well ...

South Australian grain producers are encouraged to closely monitor wheat crops following the first reports of stripe rust for the season. ‘Hot spots’ of stripe rust have been found in several paddocks of Wyalkatchem wheat near Balaklava and Dublin and in crops of Kukri and Marombi wheat near Roseworthy. SARDI senior plant pathologist Dr Hugh Wallwork said the rust had probably blown in from ...

Nicosia, Cyprus and Gland, Switzerland, 6th July 2007 (IUCN) - Cyprus, Crete, Ibiza, Sicily, Malta – for many, these islands conjure up images of dream holiday destinations. But the natural beauty that draws thousands of visitors to these islands every year is being fast eroded. Many of the close to 25,000 Mediterranean native plants that make the region one of the world’s 34 biodiversity ...

The LG Display Company, a leading firm of electronic monitors and headquarted in Korea, today announced that it will participate with client firms in the United Nations Environment Programme"s (UNEP) Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign. As part of this initiative, LG Display signed an agreement with UNEP to participate in the Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign in Busan. UN ...

Mission NewEnergy Limited (NASDAQ:MNEL) (ASX:MBT), a global provider of environmentally sustainable biofuels, is pleased to announce that it has materially completed its 2011 Jatropha tree planting season, adding 40,264 new acres and 14,331 new Jatropha contract farmers. The Company has reported strong progress on the expansion of its acreage profile and now has ...

One month after installing PureSense to manage irrigation for 80 acres of stone fruit trees, Giumarra Reedley, a division of the Giumarra Companies, is seeing promising results. Since PureSense's Field Monitoring Stations were installed, the orchard's root zone is already at least 12 inches deeper and trees are showing 8 to 14 inches of unexpected new growth. "In past growing seasons, we have not ...

Supported by Wageningen UR Greenhouse horticulture, a new high-tech greenhouse research facility will be built on the campus of University of Western Sydney, 50 km West of Sydney, Australia. Greenhouse horticultural industry is fast developing in Australia. Several new large vegetable production sites have started their operation during the last years, some of them with Dutch technology. ...

Seaweed extracts are used widely in agriculture and horticulture production systems. Benefits of the extracts can include early seed germination and establishment, improved crop performance and yield, increased resistance to biotic and abiotic stress, and enhanced postharvest shelf life. A study in the August 2015 issue of HortTechnology determined the effects of rockweed extract, applied as a ...

A recent EU-supported study has analysed the development of volunteer or 'rogue' GM (genetically modified) maize plants in a conventional crop field. It finds that their numbers are low and do not exceed the EU's threshold of 0.9 per cent for incidental GM content. Scientific data on the role of maize volunteers on cross-pollination is limited. The most detailed studies have been conducted in ...

Space-age technologies to help Maryland implement and monitor an expanded winter cover crop program that is vital to the Chesapeake Bay's health are being developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Beltsville, Md. Soil scientist Gregory McCarty and colleagues Dean Hively, Ali Sadeghi and Megan Lang with the ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory in Beltsville are ...

Increased soil biodiversity can reduce nitrogen pollution, improve nutrient uptake by plants and even increase crop yields, new research suggests. The two-year study found that levels of nitrogen leaching from soil with an abundant soil life were nearly 25% lower than for soil with a reduced level of soil life. Practices which enhance soil biodiversity such as reduced tilling, crop rotation and ...

Despite sophisticated nutrient management of potato crops, quality and yield still see wide variability. Although nutrients are already well understood, the influence of other environmental factors remains understudied. A research team from Michigan State University conducted a study to determine how the chemical and physical properties of soil, along with the light waves the plant absorbs and ...

There is 28GW of total PV installed capacity in Europe, which equals the electricity consumption of approximately 10 million households. With the Feed in Tariff instability across Europe it means the speed of future PV installations will see a slower growth rate, as investors reconsider and recalculate their ROI. This means now more than ever, the European solar developers and EPCs are focusing ...